He removed one of the charms and pressed on its surface to activate the lightning-magic glow. As the faint, bright sparks shone out into the cavern, he could indeed see. Sacagawea gasped, and he pressed the charm again, sending out another small burst of light. “There, now we can see our way.” He found a second charm in his pocket and gave it to her, showed her how to use the glowing lightning magic. “Now we can keep going.”
In contrast to the utter darkness of the cave, the two small tokens were like brilliant beacons. As his eyes adjusted, Meriwether could see that they stood on a ledge in a large cavern, with a dark river flowing past. He felt relief, realizing how easily they could have stumbled over the brink as they made their way in the darkness.
But the glowing charms revealed something even more terrifying that moved toward them on the ledge. A long sinuous creature the size of an enormous, blind maggot squirmed its way along. Where its eyes should have been, the head showed only lumps of scar tissue…and yet the pale thing crawled toward them, flicking a thin black tongue to taste the air ahead.
“We know of many blind creatures that live underground,” Sacagawea said, tensing herself but not retreating. “I do not know if this one is natural or magical.”
The thick, pale worm reacted to the vibration of her voice and thumped and rolled closer, ready to attack. “Either way it will be impossible to avoid and hard to kill,” Meriwether said.
The rock ledge was narrow, and the hulking snake thing plunged forward, picking up speed. Meriwether barely had room to hold his rifle and his pack; they couldn’t retreat, couldn’t move. He and Sacagawea drew their knives.
The thing was on them, a sticky, stinking maggot-worm that meant to crush them. Its thin tongue flickered and slashed at them. Meriwether stabbed with his blade, plunging the forged steel into the soft, slimy skin. Mucous oozed off the skin, dripped down his hand, and the knife stabbed and cut. Sacagawea also pierced it with her knife—and they knew that if this was indeed some magical manifestation summoned by the dragon sorcerer, then it would have decayed and exploded at the touch of the civilized metal.
No, this was a real underground dweller…which meant that perhaps Raven had not seen them. Yet.
But as the creature continued to attack them, lumbering closer, smashing into them, Meriwether knew they couldn’t kill it, nor could they get around it. The behemoth reared, and he took the only choice he could see.
Rather than letting them be crushed, he grabbed Sacagawea around the waist, and jumped into the dark waters of the river, just as the maggot creature lunged again for them. They dropped off the ledge and fell into the river together. The waters rushed around him, breathtakingly cold, swept them along, bouncing against the rock walls, carrying them away. He flailed, and lost hold of Sacagawea, but righted himself, kept his head above the water and was pleased to realize that Sacagawea was swimming toward the other bank and the security of rocks there. Not wanting to be separated from her, he put all his strength into swimming across the current.
He could barely see the opposite sandy shore and the woman’s shadowy form. As he strained to see by the faint light of the Franklin coin that Sacagawea held up, a large, bulky shape rose from the water. Sharp jagged edges—teeth?—grazed his arm, questing, ready to attack. He kept trying to stroke with one arm, while he used his other hand to swing his slime-encrusted knife.
He stabbed blindly, hitting the scaly creature in the current, and this time when the metal blade hit, he gagged from an overwhelming smell of rot. Sudden, magical light illuminated the river and the shore.
In the flare, he saw a very large creature with flippers instead of claws, and an elongated mouth filled with an impractical number of long teeth. This monster was indeed a magical manifestation from the dragon sorcerer. When the civilized metal penetrated its body, the creature writhed, shuddered, and exploded into gobbets of debris and shattered bones that tumbled into the subterranean current. The creaking sound it made as it died was like very old bones being sucked down to the bottom of the river. Freed from the attack, he swam for dear life to the opposing bank, where he found Sacagawea standing, holding up her glowing talisman.
“Do you think Raven knows we’re here?” Sacagawea asked.
His head pounded, and he still tried to catch his breath on the sand next to her. “Either that, or he has such a charming reception committee for all his guests. We should keep moving. We must be close…or entirely lost.”
They followed the narrow bar of sand that led them to another wide tunnel leading away from the underground river. Before they could enter, though, they saw a tightly packed crowd of tiny people. At first, he thought they would have to face the awful revenant children again, but these creatures looked too outlandish to be children. They had overlarge heads and feet, and diminutive bodies.
“How many?” Lewis asked, dazed.
Sacagawea gasped. “Too many. They’re Canoti!”
One near the front of the group brought up a small bow, nocked an arrow—an arrow that Meriwether knew would be deadly. He remembered the legends, the dead body of Barefoot Joe out near the conical mound, his only obvious injury a tiny pinprick in his leg. The other little people behind their leader also struggled for their weapons, but they were too crowded to move effectively. Meriwether took a step sideways to protect Sacagawea with his own body, but she pushed him aside, making him stumble against a rock. He caught himself just before he tumbled into the river. Sacagawea did not need his help. She moved quickly, grabbed one of the Canoti by the ankles, shaking him until he dropped his bow and poisoned arrow to the floor. As if she were having a fit, Sacagawea swung the Canoti’s body, using him like a club to batter the other little people who now tried to retreat in panic.
She shouted, her words echoing in the cavern. “I have had enough! You will no longer stand in our way!”
Meriwether concurred, and as he scrambled back to her, he picked up rocks from the cave floor and hurled them into the churning crowd of Canoti. They were panicked, outraged, but they couldn’t escape. He and Sacagawea went on the offensive, charging into the little not-people, smashing them and striking at them before they could use their poisoned arrows. None of them escaped alive.
Panting, but satisfied with their victory, they stopped. He touched Sacagawea’s hand, which still held the battered corpse of the Canoti leader she had used as a club. She looked around by the light of her talisman, angry for more little people to slay. “Madame Charbonneau,” he said, “I think we are no longer in any danger.”
“Not from these,” she agreed. She looked at the massacre with such a shine in her eyes, he feared that she would use the Canoti corpse to beat him into submission, too. She dropped the broken doll–like form and shuddered. “We should be almost under the mountain. Let us find our dragon.”
Proceeding along the tunnel the little people had attempted to guard, they came upon natural stairs hewn in the rock. They climbed, working their way from ledge to ledge, ascending out of the underground until they were high enough to see faint daylight filtering through from above. At last, they could pocket the Franklin coins and no longer depend on the stored lightning magic. Meriwether suspected that the old wizard’s spell might have released some emanations that drew the Raven’s enslaved creatures. Now he hoped they could move in secret again.
The steps faded, though, leaving them to face a high, rough-walled cylindrical shaft that led even higher into the heart of the mountain, like a chimney. Meriwether looked upward in dismay. “We have to climb.”